Vivid audio Giya G1 and Wilson Maxx3

Both are great speakers, I am a Vivid dealer, so you can take my comments for what they are, either biased or not, I can not supply you with speakers in Sweden anyway.

Here is my take on the two speakers both are fantastically well built products, both play loud and have great bass the difference comes down to driver technology.

Wilson is using a suite of very high quality drivers from several different manufacturers that represent some of the finest drivers made by their respective companies ie Focal, Scanspeak.

The Vivids use far superior driver technology that represent the life's work of the brilliant Lawrence Dickie who was the sole engineer who brought B&W back to prominence in the nineties.

Vivid is a much more technologically advanced loudspeaker than Wilson and uses many different techniques to lower distortion in a loudspeaker these include:

1: tapered tube loading
2: driver decoupling
3: cabinet designed as a bass trap to absorb low frequency energy.
4: non parallel cabinet construction
5: unique magnet designs designed to concentrate magnetic fields and lower distortion.

If you go to the Vivid website you can read about all of their technologies and patents which are numerous.

Now for the sound, the Vivids are faster and more articulate than the Wilson's and sound completely coherent as they use the exact same material for all drivers.

I still remember a demo done by Philip O Hanlon the USA importer years ago, when the Giya G1 rattled out ceiling lights at CES! I have never heard a speaker in that price range with the bass definition of sheer walop of the Vivid's if it was my money I would purchase the Vivid's hands down, they may not seem as exotic using aluminum for driver materials but if you look at the engineering rather than the specs you can clearly see that Lawrence Dickie is a loudspeaker design genius whose designs are advancing what state of the art really means.

Now I have sold Wilson's for years and they are excellent speakers and sound wonderful, it is my opinion that the Vivid's are an even better speaker than the Wilsons.

I heard earlier versions of both speakers some years back at a So Cal hi fi show. Different rooms/Different systems - so it's not precisely an apples-to-apples comparison, but....

I preferred the Vivid. It was a more forward sound, but really boxless and airy, relative to the Wilson (which, by the way, were awfully good in their own right). The Wilsons seemed more "polite"(only on a relative basis, they were plenty dynamic compared to most anything else I heard, save the Vivids and the big MBLs) and might have shown better with classical music. IME, forward sounding speakers like the Vivid sometimes get a bit hard on massed strings, but I never heard that kind of program material on my audition, so I can't comment on how well the Vivids handle that test.

The two were different enough that I'd imagine most people would have a strong preference one way or the other. I liked the Vivid, but I'm sure that many would go the other way.

Marty

"I would say that I am more towards a musical sound, not too much added warmth, but not sterile and cold "Hi-Fi:ish"."

If that's your goal, I'd go with the MAXX 3. You can score a used pair now, or wait for the MAXX 5s.

I admire both brands--but why oh why do the Vivid Dudes try and blow the roof off their room with output!

At Newport the little Red devils were horribly over driven every time I ventured into the room

Pity the product is good-they need to learn to stop trying to play like the
Wilsons do!

Des

Ok, thanks for the input. Hopefully I will get a chance to listen to Giya G-1 in the next 10 days. I will arrange for a listeningsession with Maxx3 next week.

Kana813: I can´t find any info on Maxx5, just curious, eventhough I would be more interested in Maxx3 used. More bang for $$